How to format your references using the BMC Family Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Family Practice. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

1. Zerhouni EA. Information access. NIH public access policy. Science. 2004;306:1895.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Dawkins MS, Woodington A. Pattern recognition and active vision in chickens. Nature. 2000;403:652–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Ninomiya H, Elinson RP, Winklbauer R. Antero-posterior tissue polarity links mesoderm convergent extension to axial patterning. Nature. 2004;430:364–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Rosskopf D, Bornhorst A, Rimmbach C, Schwahn C, Kayser A, Krüger A, et al. Comment on “A common genetic variant is associated with adult and childhood obesity.” Science. 2007;315:187; author reply 187.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

1. Liu E, Noppe-Brandon S. Imagination First. San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey-Bass; 2011.

An edited book

1. Leuven RSEW, Ragas AMJ, Smits AJM, Velde G van der, editors. Living Rivers: Trends and Challenges in Science and Management. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Schär MO, Rodeo SA. Biology of Injury and Repair of Soft Tissues of the Shoulder. In: Milano G, Grasso A, editors. Shoulder Arthroscopy: Principles and Practice. London: Springer; 2014. p. 59–72.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for BMC Family Practice.

Blog post

1. Luntz S. Robots To The Rescue Of The Great Barrier Reef. IFLScience. 2016. Accessed 30 Oct 2018.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

1. Government Accountability Office. Electronic Government: Challenges Must Be Addressed With Effective Leadership and Management. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Garlapally V. Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Impact on Metamorphosis and Thyroid Development in African Clawed Frogs. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois University; 2017.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

1. Crow K. A Drive to Save a Tiger By the Name of Tammany. New York Times. 2002;:144.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	BMC Family Practice
Abbreviation	BMC Fam. Pract.
ISSN (online)	1471-2296
Scope	Family Practice